For the life of me I’ll never figure out why they had to hold a service in a place so overwhelmed with the smell of varnish.

It felt like the carpenter, filled with hate, decided to show his displeasure through the wood- smacking it down with layer after layer of varnish. His presence was heavy and recent just like the smell. I suppose when you’re weeping and listening to comforting voices, you don’t pay much attention to your nose. Not like people bother sniffing out trouble on finer days either.

The smell took me back to an old memory, where while helping around the house I was tasked with coating old furniture with new layers of varnish. It was help by virtue of me not being able to get in the way of actual work but I liked it none the less. The smell so artificial and powerful was pleasant. The nature of varnish in it’s liquid form added to the effect, so like water, but faster to flow and evaporate. So delicate you’d think it’s valuable.

I was working on a phone stand, one that still had it’s twisted, crunched and swelled shape as a tree trunk, you’d think it was alive if it wasn’t for it’s branches that had been cut off so you could put phones and phonebooks on it. I never bothered to get the dust out of the crannies, I figured no one would bother to check.

The memory ended when another waft made me gag. My neighbor leaned over to share his dispare, I only told him that it was good, very good that he felt something.